Chapter 3

And who that loves to walk or wander over the green earth, except indeed it merely be some sonnetteer or ballad-monger, if he had time and could afford it, and lived in a tolerably open country, would not keep, at the very least, three greyhounds? No better eating than a hare, though old blockhead Burton--and he was a blockhead, if blockhead ever there was one in this world--in his Anatomy, chooses to call it melancholy meat. Did he ever, by way of giving dinner a fair commencement, swallow a tureen of hare-soup with half-a-peck of mealy potatoes? If ever he did--and notwithstanding called hare melancholy meat, there can be no occasion whatever for now wishing him any further punishment. If he never did--then he was on earth the most unfortunate of men. England--as you love us and yourself--cultivate hare-soup, without for a moment dreaming of giving up roasted hare well stuffed with stuffing, jelly sauce being handed round on a large trencher. But there is no such thing as melancholy meat--neither fish, flesh, nor fowl--provided only there be enough of it. Otherwise, the daintiest dish drives you to despair. But independently of spit, pot, and pan, what delight in even daunering about the home-farm seeking for a hare! It is quite an art or science. You must consult not only the wind and weather of to-day, but of the night before--and of every day and night back to last Sunday, when probably you were prevented by the rain from going to church. Then hares shift the sites of their country seats every season. This month they love the fallow field--that, the stubble; this, you will see them, almost without looking for them, big and brown on the bare stony upland lea--that, you must have a hawk's eye in your head to discern, discover, detect them, like birds in their nests, embowered below the bunweed or the bracken; they choose to spend this week in a wood impervious to wet or wind--that, in a marsh too plashy for the plover; now you may depend on finding madam at home in the sulks within the very heart of a bramble-bush or dwarf black-thorn thicket, while the squire cocks his fud at you from the top of a knowe open to blasts from all the airts;--in short, he who knows at all times where to find a hare, even if he knew not one single thing else but the way to his mouth, cannot be called an ignorant man--is probably a better-informed man in the long run than the friend on his right, discoursing about the Turks, the Greeks, the Portugals, and all that sort of thing, giving himself the lie on every arrival of his daily paper. We never yet knew an old courser (him of the Sporting Annals included), who was not a man both of abilities and virtues. But where were we?--at the Trysting-hill Farmhouse, jocularly called Hunger-them-Out.

Line is formed, and with measured steps we march towards the hills--for we ourselves are the schoolboy, bold, bright, and blooming as the rose--fleet of foot almost as the very antelope--Oh! now, alas! dim and withered as a stalk from which winter has swept all the blossoms--slow as the sloth along the ground--spindle-shanked as a lean and slippered pantaloon!

"O heaven! that from our bright and shining years Age would but take the things youth heeded not!"

An old shepherd meets us on the long sloping rushy ascent to the hills--and putting his brown withered finger to his gnostic nose, intimates that she is in her old form behind the dyke--and the noble dumb animals, with pricked-up ears and brandished tail, are aware that her hour is come. Plash, plash, through the marsh, and then on the dry furze beyond, you see her large dark-brown eyes--Soho, soho, soho--Halloo, halloo, halloo--for a moment the seemingly horned creature appears to dally with the danger, and to linger ere she lays her lugs on her shoulder, and away, like thoughts pursuing thoughts--away fly hare and hounds towards the mountain.

Stand all still for a minute--for not a bush the height of our knee to break our view--and is not that brattling burst up the brae "beautiful exceedingly," and sufficient to chain in admiration the beatings of the rudest gazer's heart? Yes; of all beautiful sights--none more, none so much so, as the miraculous motion of a four-footed wild animal, changed at once, from a seeming inert sod or stone, into flight fleet as that of the falcon's wing! Instinct against instinct! fear and ferocity in one flight! Pursuers and pursued bound together, in every turning and twisting of their career, by the operation of two headlong passions! Now they are all three upon her--and she dies! No! glancing aside, like a bullet from a wall, she bounds almost at a right angle from her straight course--and, for a moment, seems to have made good her escape. Shooting headlong one over the other, all three, with erected tails, suddenly bring themselves up--like racing barks when down goes the helm, and one after another, bowsprit and boom almost entangled, rounds the buoy, and again bears up on the starboard tack upon a wind--and in a close line, head to heel, so that you might cover them all with a sheet--again, all opened-mouthed on her haunches, seem to drive, and go with her over the cliff.

We are all on foot--and pray what horse could gallop through among all these quagmires, over all the hags in these peat-mosses, over all the water-cressy and puddocky ditches, sinking soft on hither and thither side, even to the two-legged leaper's ankle or knee--up that hill on the perpendicular strewn with flint-shivers--down these loose-hanging cliffs--through that brake of old stunted birches with stools hard as iron--over that mile of quaking muir where the plover breeds--and-- finally--up--up--up to where the dwarfed heather dies away among the cinders, and in winter you might mistake a flock of ptarmigan for a patch of snow?

The thing is impossible--so we are all on foot--and the fleetest keeper that ever footed it in Scotland shall not in a run of three miles give us sixty yards. "Ha! Peter the wild boy, how are you off for wind?"--we exultingly exclaim, in giving Red-jacket the go-by on the bent. But see--see--they are bringing her back again down the Red Mount--glancing aside, she throws them all three out--yes, all three, and few enow too, though fair play be a jewel--and ere they can recover, she is ahead a hundred yards up the hill. There is a beautiful trial of bone and bottom! Now one, and then another, takes almost imperceptibly the lead; but she steals away from them inch by inch--beating them all blind--and, suddenly disappearing--Heaven knows how--leaves them all in the lurch. With out-lolling tongues, hanging heads, panting sides, and drooping tails, they come one by one down the steep, looking somewhat sheepish, and then lie down together on their sides, as if indeed about to die in defeat. She has carried away her cocked fud unscathed for the third time, from Three of the Best in all broad Scotland--nor can there any longer be the smallest doubt in the world, in the minds of the most sceptical, that she is--what all the country-side have long known her to be--a Witch.

From cat-killing to Coursing, we have seen that the transition is easy in the order of nature--and so is it from coursing to Fox-Hunting--by means, however, of a small intermediate step--the Harriers. Musical is a pack of harriers as a peal of bells. How melodiously they ring changes in the woods, and in the hollow of the mountains! A level country we have already consigned to merited contempt, (though there is no rule without an exception; and, as we shall see by-and-by, there is one too here), and commend us even with harriers, to the ups and downs of the pastoral or sylvan heights. If old or indolent, take your station on a heaven-kissing hill, and hug the echoes to your heart. Or, if you will ride, then let it be on a nimble galloway of some fourteen hands, that can gallop a good pace on the road, and keep sure footing on bridle-paths, or upon the pathless braes--and by judicious horsemanship, you may meet the pack at many a loud-mouthed burst, and haply be not far out at the death. But the schoolboy--and the shepherd--and the whipper-in--as each hopes for favour from his own Diana--let them all be on foot--and have studied the country for every imaginable variety that can occur in the winter's campaign. One often hears of a cunning old fox--but the cunningest old fox is a simpleton to the most guileless young hare. What deceit in every double! What calculation in every squat! Of what far more complicated than Cretan Labyrinth is the creature, now hunted for the first time, sitting in the centre! a-listening the baffled roar! Now into the pool she plunges, to free herself from the fatal scent that lures on death. Now down the torrent course she runs and leaps, to cleanse it from her poor paws, fur-protected from the sharp flints that lame the fiends that so sorely beset her, till many limp along in their own blood. Now along the coping of stone walls she crawls and scrambles--and now ventures from the wood along the frequented high-road, heedless of danger from the front, so that she may escape the horrid growling in the rear. Now into the pretty little garden of the wayside, or even the village cot, she creeps, as if to implore protection from the innocent children, or the nursing mother. Yes, she will even seek refuge in the sanctuary of the cradle. The terrier drags her out from below a tombstone, and she dies in the churchyard. The hunters come reeking and reeling on, we ourselves among the number--and to the winding horn that echoes reply from the walls of the house of worship--and now, in momentary contrition,

"Drops a sad, serious tear upon our playful pen!"

and we bethink ourselves--alas! all in vain, for

"_Naturam expellas furcâ, tamen usque recurret_"--

of these solemn lines of the poet of peace and humanity:--

"One lesson, reader, let us two divide, Taught by what nature shows and what conceals, Never to blend our pleasure and our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."

It is next to impossible to reduce fine poetry to practice--so let us conclude with a panegyric on Fox-Hunting. The passion for this pastime is the very strongest that can possess the heart--nor, of all the heroes of antiquity, is there one to our imagination more poetical than Nimrod. His whole character is given, and his whole history, in two words--Mighty Hunter. That he hunted the fox is not probable; for the sole aim and end of his existence was not to exterminate--that would have been cutting his own throat--but to thin man-devouring wild beasts--the Pards--with Leo at their head. But in a land like this, where not even a wolf has existed for centuries--nor a wild boar--the same spirit that would have driven the British youth on the tusk and paw of the Lion and the Tiger, mounts them in scarlet on such steeds as never neighed before the flood, nor "summered high in bliss" on the sloping pastures of undeluged Ararat--and gathers them together in gallant array on the edge of the cover,

"When first the hunter's startling horn is heard Upon the golden hills."

What a squadron of cavalry! What fiery eyes and flaming nostrils--betokening with what ardent passion the noble animals will revel in the chase! Bay, brown, black, dun, chestnut, sorrel, grey--of all shades and hues--and every courser distinguished by his own peculiar character of shape and form--yet all blending harmoniously as they crown the mount; so that a painter would only have to group and colour them as they stand, nor lose, if able to catch them, one of the dazzling lights or deepening shadows streamed on them from that sunny, yet not unstormy sky.

You read in books of travels and romances, of Barbs and Arabs galloping in the desert--and well doth Sir Walter speak of Saladin at the head of the Saracenic chivalry; but take our word for it, great part of all such descriptions are mere falsehood or fudge. Why in the devil's name should dwellers in the desert always be going at full speed? And how can that full speed be anything more than a slow heavy hand-gallop at the best, the Barbs being up to the belly at every stroke? They are always, it is said, in high condition--but we, who know something about horse-flesh, give that assertion the lie. They have seldom anything either to eat or drink; are lean as church-mice; and covered with, clammy sweat before they have ambled a league from the tent. And then such a set of absurd riders, with knees up to their noses, like so many tailors riding to Brentford, _viâ_ the deserts of Arabia! Such bits, such bridles, and such saddles! But the whole set-out, rider and ridden, accoutrements and all, is too much for one's gravity, and must occasion a frequent laugh to the wild ass as he goes braying unharnessed by. But look there! Arabian blood, and British bone! Not bred in and in to the death of all the fine strong animal spirits--but blood intermingled and interfused by twenty crosses, nature exulting in each successive produce, till her power can no further go, and in yonder glorious grey,

"Gives the world assurance of a horse!"

Form the Three Hundred into squadron, or squadrons, and in the hand of each rider a sabre alone, none of your lances, all bare his breast but for the silver-laced blue, the gorgeous uniform of the Hussars of England--confound all cuirasses and cuirassiers!--let the trumpet sound a charge, and ten thousand of the proudest of the Barbaric chivalry be opposed with spear and scimitar--and through their snow-ranks will the Three Hundred go like thaw--splitting them into dissolution with the noise of thunder.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating of it; and where, we ask, were the British cavalry ever overthrown? And how could the great north-country horse-coupers perform their contracts, but for the triumphs of the Turf? Blood--blood there must be, either for strength, or speed, or endurance. The very heaviest cavalry--the Life Guards and the Scots Greys, and all other dragoons, must have blood. But without racing and fox-hunting, where could it be found? Such pastimes nerve one of the arms of the nation when in battle; but for them 'twould be palsied. What better education, too, not only for a horse, but his rider, before playing a bloodier game in his first war campaign? Thus he becomes demi-corpsed with the noble animal; and what easy, equable motion to him is afterwards a charge over a wide level plain, with nothing in the way but a few regiments of flying Frenchmen! The hills and dales of merry England have been the best riding-school to her gentlemen--her gentlemen who have not lived at home at ease--but, with Paget, and Stewart, and Seymour, and Cotton, and Somerset, and Vivian, have left their hereditary halls, and all the peaceful pastimes pursued among the sylvan scenery, to try the mettle of their steeds, and cross swords with the vaunted Gallic chivalry; and still have they been in the shock victorious; witness the skirmish that astonished Napoleon at Saldanha--the overthrow that uncrowned him at Waterloo!

"Well, do you know, that, after all you have said, Mr North, I cannot understand the passion and the pleasure of fox-hunting. It seems to me both cruel and dangerous."

Cruelty! Is there cruelty in laying the rein on their necks, and delivering them up to the transport of their high condition--for every throbbing vein is visible--at the first full burst of that maddening cry, and letting loose to their delight the living thunderbolts? Danger! What danger but of breaking their own legs, necks, or backs, and those of their riders? And what right have you to complain of that, lying all your length, a huge hulking fellow, snoring and snorting half-asleep on a sofa, sufficient to sicken a whole street? What though it be but a smallish, reddish-brown, sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, and passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue? After the first Tally-ho, Reynard is rarely seen, till he is run in upon--once, perhaps, in the whole run, skirting a wood, or crossing a common. It is an Idea that is pursued, on a whirlwind of horses, to a storm of canine music--worthy, both, of the largest lion that ever leaped among a band of Moors, sleeping at midnight by an extinguished fire on the African sands. There is, we verily believe it, nothing Foxy in the Fancy of one man in all that glorious field of Three Hundred. Once off and away--while wood and welkin rings--and nothing is felt--nothing is imaged in that hurricane flight, but scorn of all obstructions, dykes, ditches, drains, brooks, palings, canals, rivers, and all the impediments reared in the way of so many rejoicing madmen, by nature, art, and science, in an enclosed, cultivated, civilised, and Christian country. There they go--prince and peer, baronet and squire--the nobility and gentry of England, the flower of the men of the earth, each on such a steed as Pollux never reined, nor Philip's warlike son--for could we imagine Bucephalus here, ridden by his own tamer, Alexander would be thrown out during the very first burst, and glad to find his way dismounted to a village alehouse for a pail of meal and water. Hedges, trees, groves, gardens, orchards, woods, farmhouses, huts, halls, mansions, palaces, spires, steeples, towers, and temples, all go wavering by, each demigod seeing, or seeing them not, as his winged steed skims or labours along, to the swelling or sinking music, now loud as a near regimental band, now faint as an echo. Far and wide over the country are dispersed the scarlet runners--and a hundred villages pour forth their admiring swarms, as the main current of the chase roars by, or disparted runlets float wearied and all astray, lost at last in the perplexing woods. Crash goes the top-timber of the five-barred gate--away over the ears flies the ex-roughrider in a surprising somerset--after a succession of stumbles, down is the gallant Grey on knees and nose, making sad work among the fallow--Friendship is a fine thing, and the story of Damon and Pythias most affecting indeed--but Pylades eyes Orestes on his back sorely drowned in sludge, and tenderly leaping over him as he lies, claps his hands to his ear, and with a "hark forward, tantivy!" leaves him to remount, lame and at leisure--and ere the fallen has risen and shaken himself, is round the corner of the white village-church, down the dell, over the brook, and close on the heels of the straining pack, all a-yell up the hill crowned by the Squire's Folly. "Every man for himself, and God for us all," is the devout and ruling apothegm of the day. If death befall, what wonder? since man and horse are mortal; but death loves better a wide soft bed with quiet curtains and darkened windows in a still room, the clergyman in the one corner with his prayers, and the physician in another with his pills, making assurance doubly sure, and preventing all possibility of the dying Christian's escape. Let oak branch smite the too slowly stooping skull, or rider's back not timely levelled with his steed's; let faithless bank give way, and bury in the brook; let hidden drain yield to fore-feet and work a sudden wreck; let old coal-pit, with briery mouth, betray; and roaring river bear down man and horse, to cliffs unscalable by the very Welsh goat; let duke's or earl's son go sheer over a quarry twenty feet deep, and as many high; yet "without stop or stay, down the rocky way," the hunter train flows on; for the music grows fiercer and more savage--lo! all that remains together of the pack, in far more dreadful madness than hydrophobia, leaping out of their skins, under insanity from the scent, for Vulpes can hardly now make a crawl of it; and ere he, they, whipper-in, or any one of the other three demoniacs, have time to look in one another's splashed faces, he is torn into a thousand pieces, gobbled up in the general growl; and smug, and smooth, and dry, and warm, and cosy, as he was an hour and twenty-five minutes ago exactly, in his furze bush in the cover--he is now piecemeal in about thirty distinct stomachs; and is he not, pray, well off for sepulture?

CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET.

FYTTE SECOND.

We are always unwilling to speak of ourselves, lest we should appear egotistical--for egotism we detest. Yet the sporting world must naturally be anxious to know something of our early history--and their anxiety shall therefore be now assuaged. The truth is, that we enjoyed some rare advantages and opportunities in our boyhood regarding field-sports, and grew up, even from that first great era in every Lowlander's life, Breeching-day, not only a fisher but a fowler; and it is necessary that we enter into some interesting details.

There had been from time immemorial, it was understood, in the Manse, a duck-gun of very great length, and a musket that, according to an old tradition, had been out both in the Fifteen and Forty-five. There were ten boys of us, and we succeeded by rotation to gun or musket, each boy retaining possession for a single day only; but then the shooting season continued all the year. They must have been of admirable materials and workmanship; for neither of them so much as once burst during the Seven Years' War. The musket, who, we have often since thought, must surely rather have been a blunderbuss in disguise, was a perfect devil for kicking when she received her discharge; so much so, indeed, that it was reckoned creditable for the smaller boys not to be knocked down by the recoil. She had a very wide mouth--and was thought by us "an awfu' scatterer;" a qualification which we considered of the very highest merit. She carried anything we chose to put into her--there still being of all her performances a loud and favourable report--balls, buttons, chucky-stanes, slugs, or hail. She had but two faults--she had got addicted, probably in early life, to one habit of burning priming, and to another of hanging fire; habits of which it was impossible, for us at least, to break her by the most assiduous hammering of many a new series of flints; but such was the high place she justly occupied in the affection and admiration of us all, that faults like these did not in the least detract from her general character. Our delight, when she did absolutely and positively and _bonâ fide_ "go off," was in proportion to the comparative rarity of that occurrence; and as to hanging fire--why, we used to let her take her own time, contriving to keep her at the level as long as our strength sufficed, eyes shut perhaps, teeth clenched, face girning, and head slightly averted over the right shoulder, till Muckle-mou'd Meg, who, like most other Scottish females, took things leisurely, went off at last with an explosion like the blowing up of a rock.